


Everywhere In the World (They Hurt Little Girls)

by Pandean



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, BAMF Arya Stark, BAMF Sansa Stark, Canon-Typical Violence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Falling In Love, Fluff and Angst, For the most part, Gen, Girl Power, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, No Bashing, One Shot, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pain, Patriarchy, Period-Typical Sexism, Recovery, Sad with a Happy Ending, Some Sad Endings, Unrequited Love, Wildling Culture & Customs, Wildlings - Freeform, direwolves, silk hiding steel, struggles
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-24
Updated: 2020-06-19
Packaged: 2021-02-27 18:42:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 9,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22870441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pandean/pseuds/Pandean
Summary: Everywhere, they hurt little girls. But those little girls grow up.Stories of hurt, pain, survival, and even thriving from the female characters of GoT/ASOIAF. The situation from their perspectives along with the hidden grace that comes with it. Beneath the silk, hides steel.Be warned. Some of these will not have happy endings.A mix of show and book canon. More of a character piece than a plot piece. Basically a bunch of one-shots about the strong women of Westeros.
Comments: 40
Kudos: 56





	1. Cersei I

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry this first one is a little short! They'll probably be shorter than normal book chapters in general since they're more character focused but I hope you like it anyway!

From a young age Cersei Lannister knew that her father didn't love her. Not just that, he couldn't even pretend to, either. She isn't entirely sure he's able to love, anymore. Maybe once, before her mother died, but not anymore. Except for when it comes to Jaime. Her golden twin, the pride of her father, the apple of every Lannister's eye. She wasn't dumb, no matter what her Septa sometimes told her. In truth, she's remarkably perceptive. 

Jaime is the heir, the next Warden of the West, a _male_. He would carry on the family name, be lord after their father died, while she would be sold to the highest bidder, take their name, and birth child after child.

Of course her father loved her less than Jaime. She _was_ less than Jaime.

Her Aunt Genna proves it, with the story of her marriage to that awful Frey. The daughter of Tytos Lannister given to a man so beneath her, so vile, and yet no one protested that it was wrong. Except her father, once. But her father will also give her away to whoever he thinks is best. It won't be a Frey, he knows they're better than that, but either way she will be property to be bought and bartered while Jaime will be a lord in his own right.

There's only so much loss of control one can take before they break and Cersei Lannister breaks quickly. It's when she seduces her brother, finding that despite the fact that she hates everything he stands for, she loves that she can in this secret way ruin the family's golden boy. But she also loves him too, after a while, because they are twins after all. They share a soul, shared a womb, came into the world together. But that doesn't matter to Tywin Lannister.

So while Cersei is once again scolded by her Septa for her stitching, Jaime is off sword training with their father. When Cersei wishes to speak to him, she can't do as Jaime does and just enter the room. No, she needs to make an appointment like a stranger. Maybe she is a stranger to him. Because he doesn't know her, not really. Tywin may gift her things like silks and jewels and toys on her nameday but they're the generic gifts one gives a young girl. She watches Jaime pine over something he really wants and he gets it for stupid reasons like being able to finish a book. Not even his nameday and he gets a new dagger.

But this is the life a woman must live, her Aunt Genna has said before, and it's unfair and brutal. Men will always be in some sort of control. No matter how easily Genna yanks her Frey husband around, others will still go to him first before they go to Genna with everything.

Cersei Lannister vows to herself that she will not be yanked around by men. No matter who, no matter why. One day she will have power in her own right.

Until then, she must work on her stitches.


	2. Elia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elia has to be one of the strongest characters we never get to see.

If there is one thing she's certain of in her relatively short life, it's that her brothers love her. But brotherly love is not enough, not when you're kept hostage by the Mad King, trying to soothe your terrified children because they can hear the killing going around outside.

But she's getting ahead of herself.

No one expected her to live as long as she has. Not due to any enemies but due to her birth. Sickly and frail, she's always been. Even in the warmest part of the country, Dorne, she'll catch a chill at the slightest hint of a breeze. It's just how it's always been. Her brothers are protective of her, Oberyn especially, and she bonds with him in a way that many siblings don't ever bond. Deep underneath all the passion and hellfire, the man is a good man and to be honest she prefers the passion and open emotion to Doran's quiet stoicism and silent moves of the cyvasse board that is the game of thrones.

That doesn't mean she doesn't understand how important they are and she takes his lessons to heart. One day she will be a noble lady in another man's castle, after all. She needs to know how to survive without her brothers protecting her.

And oh does she end up in another man's castle alright. Unable to find a suitable bride of old Valyarian blood, the royal family turns to hers and makes the offer. Doran leaps at it but Oberyn is more skeptical. There's something not right about the Crown Prince that he can't put his finger on.

Elia soon finds out what it is.

The wedding and events before become a whirlwind of sound, color, and names of all the nobles in the court of King's Landing and while she doesn't necessarily like to play the game, she does well enough to keep her head above water and so that the others know they cannot eat her alive.

It's after the wedding, during the bedding, where she has her first time ever alone with Rhaegar. Beforehand he always had an excuse, was always occupied, or she was in the company of others. To be truthful she doesn't really know her husband and she expects she never will.

The bedding isn't horrible but it isn't great either. She's one of the few Dornish girls who remain maidens and while Rhaegar gives a half-hearted attempt to get her wet before entering her, he enters her all the same and it's still painful and she grips the bedsheets, wincing. When the maids come in the morning they gossip over her maiden's blood on the sheets. Apparently everyone thought she was a Dornish whore and wouldn't bleed.

There are strong words she would like to say to these people but instead she grins and bears it knowing that the servants are in the employ of some spymaster or other.

Rhaegar is obsessed. That's a good word for it. Obsessed with the occult. Obsessed with some odd fire religion she doesn't understand one bit. Obsessed with recreating the perfect triad of new Targaryens. And so he fucks her diligently every night until he climaxes (she never really does) until she is able to give him the news that she's pregnant.

Suddenly all the courtiers that snicker at her, whisper 'Dornish whore', and other nasty things have stopped and they're all licking her metaphorical boots as she swells with child. She doesn't like any of them. Except for Queen Rhaella, who knows how it is to be married to a Targaryen man, who has it so much worse than her. Elia makes it a point to come to her when the King is away and help tend to her cuts and bruises that she won't let the Maester -- a smarmy man by the name Pycelle -- see. 

They talk about their respective husbands and Rhaella apologizes to her though in truth her situation is so much worse. Elia is there for her miscarriage after miscarriage until it's time for her to birth her own babe and it's the worst pain she ever thought imaginable. She loses so much blood, feels so weak, like she's going to die. But she manages to give birth to a beautiful daughter named Rhaenys.

Elia had no hand in naming her. Elia was unconscious for a week after birth, it took so much out of her. It's Rhaegar who named Rhaenys, disregarding all the names she wanted, and is now obsessed with her giving him an Aegon and Visenya. When she jokes about him trying to make the original trio of Targaryens reborn he just looks at her seriously and says 'yes'. 

Even so, Elia loves her daughter. There is no Rhaegar in her red-brown curls, her dark Dornish skin and eyes, and for that she is thankful. She can look at her, gaze at her for hours, and pretend that she is someone else living a different life. That's what she does when things get too hard. Pretend in her head she's in a different life. It was a game she played with Oberyn as children.

The maester tells Rhaegar he must wait at least a year before getting her with child again. Rhaella tells Rhaegar the same thing. Rhaegar doesn't listen. She suffers her first miscarriage in quiet dignity; only crying when she's certain no one is watching. Rhaelle again becomes her closest confident, like a mother to her. Two more miscarriages and the King decides that she's doing it on purpose and declares she will be locked in the Maidenvault until she can produce another child.

And oh, she tries. Like she has a choice. Rhaegar will come in, they will do their duty, he'll climax and leave her whether or not she's satisfied, rinse and repeat for months until she's pregnant once more with a second child. Rhaegar is certain it must be a boy and his name will be Aegon. Elia thinks that's ridiculous. Every other fucking Targaryen is named Aegon. 

She's heavily pregnant during that one, cursed day at Harrenhal. She watches her husband win joust after joust with her favor on his arm and feels something stirring in her for him that she normally never feels. Despite his looks, it's Rhaegar's attitude that makes him unattractive. Self-centered, thoughtless, only cares for himself. Goes into solitude for days to brood over some subject or another. But him jousting, it's like almost a different person. She can pretend he's different; as passionate in their marriage as he is at jousting.

And then the game of pretend goes too far, seeps into the real world, because he wins the tourney and when handed the beautiful crown of winter roses he rides right past her, his pregnant wife, and deposits the crown directly onto Lyanna Stark's head.

She finally knows the blind raging passion Oberyn feels so easily at the sight. She's used to his slights. But here, in front of everyone? While she's carrying their second child? Must he? Rhaegar does nothing without thinking there's a divine reason for it, egomaniac that he is, so he must think there's some divine reason for crowning the Stark girl. After her anger abates, she must calm her brothers, and when they are also calm she worries.

She worries not for her own future. She worries for the Stark girl. Lyanna is fifteen and barely a woman. Beautiful in a wild way but still very much a child with childish dreams of romance and knights and chivarly. Elia doesn't care how much the girl says she hates those things because she can see it in her eyes. Everyone wants to be wanted, after all, and who better to want you than the Crown Prince? Even the most stubborn, headstrong of girl wishes she had a suitable man wrapped around her finger.

But Lyanna is already betrothed. It's to the boar, Robert Baratheon, who's made a few passing swipes and comments toward her before. It's another reason why she can see past Lyanna's tough persona to the little dreaming girl underneath. She'd dream too if she had to deal with Robert. Rhaegar was cold and odd and his mood changeed sporadically but he never hurt her, never lied with anyone else.

Or, at least she thought.

She gives birth and nearly dies. Her son is called Aegon, of course. The maester tells Rhaegar that she cannot withstand another pregnancy and Rhaegar looks off into the distance, muttering about the song of ice and fire, whatever that is, and before she knows it he's left her and his small children and has kidnapped Lyanna Stark. Kidnapping is the official version of it, anyway, as told by the Starks and Baratheons, but Elia knows that most likely Lyanna went willingly, dreaming of adventure with a prince. 

And oddly enough she can't find it in herself to hate the young girl for stealing Rhaegar away from her. All she can feel is pity. Because Rhaegar may woo her now but Rhaegar cares only for one thing in the end and that one thing is Rhaegar. Lyanna is abandoned somewhere in Dorne with the Kingsguard and Elia specifically sends a message to her brothers not to attack her because this is a girl trapped in a tower, not an enemy to fight. Just another girl duped by the Prince and his good looks.

She seems him off to war after his mad father fries Rickard Stark alive and strangles Brandon Stark without so much as lifting a finger. Throughout the war she keeps to her rooms in the Maidenvault, terrified of her father-in-law. He thinks she will rebel, that she will hatch some type of treason, and these days anyone who the Mad King thinks is hatching treason is likely to be burned in wildfire. She will not let her kids grow up without her and won't let herself die without them. 

The story goes that Rhaegar dies on the Trident, a warhammer crushing in his chest, and his last words are of a girl that is not her. But there was no love between the two of them anyway. She doubts there is any true love between him and Lyanna too. Just obsession, just lust, just prophecies that Rhaegar has bouncing around in his head all the gods damned time.

In her bones she feels the end is near as she gathers up her children, Aegon in her arms and Rhaenys toddling after holding a none-to-happy black kitten named Balerion. They wait in their chambers, the royal ones, not the Maidenvault and that's where she remains, thinking of her life and if it'd been different. If she hadn't been sickly. If they found a suitable bride of Valeryian decent. If, if, if. She plays her pretend game as men outside her halls are slaughtered and her children are ripped away from her.

She sees her infant son's head bashed against the wall, Rhaenys pulled out from under the bed and stabbed forty different times, she's forced under the Mountain as he has his way with her. In all of this, she's strangely detached. All she can think is, where's Rhaegar? Where is the man who promised the High Septon to protect her, cherish her, love her until his last day?

He is dead and she will join him in the afterlife, that much she already knows as she bleeds out onto the bed. Miles and miles away a different, younger girl bleeds out as she pushes the third head of the dragon into the world. But it's too late. The other two heads are dead. The dragon is gone and becomes a snow, a wolf.

Maybe it's better that way. She can only watch from her place in the afterlife, often with Lyanna herself, as their respective brothers do their duty, sometimes besmirching their honor. She makes sure Lyanna knows she doesn't hate her.

Elia has always been sickly. Always so quick to catch a chill. But nothing compares to the chill that sets in her heart every time she thinks of Rhaegar.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love Elia as an idea and as a character in my head and I hope you love her too! Let me know what you think! I fudged around with some timelines a bit, hopefully that's okay! Note, mentions of rape, violent death, etc. in this one.


	3. Lyanna (Mormont)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lyanna knows she's not a great beauty. She doesn't particularly care.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So Lyanna Mormont. I have a lot of thoughts about her. Mainly due to body image because it must be hard to be named after someone known for their beauty and be a kid in a weird pre-pubescent/pubescent teen's body. Everyone here probably remembers puberty. It wasn't fun. Doubt it's fun in Westeros, either. So, it makes sense to me she has some body confidence issues. I myself struggle with an eating disorder and so I'm very critical of my own appearance and I don't think I could stand being compared to a great beauty or named after one. 
> 
> Instead I'm named after a Greek tragedy incest baby between Oedipus and Jocasta. So, uh, I win?
> 
> I also wanted her to recognize different forms of strength and end up having a somewhat sisterly relationship with Sansa and Arya. Which means, yes, in this one-shot, she does survive killing a giant. Because I don't care about plot armor or credibility Jon yelled at a fucking dragon for a good minute during the battle for Dawn I think Lyanna can kill a giant.
> 
> Also hints of her being Tormund's kiddo because c'mon, we all know he never fucked a real bear.

Her mother, Maege Mormont, says she was fathered by a bear, just like all her sisters. But her sisters are dead now and so is her mother and Lyanna is left alone on Bear Island, a Lady in her own right at ten years of age.

She supposes there's some truth to the statement. Lyanna was named for Lyanna Stark, a great Northern beauty, but there's nothing beautiful about Lyanna. She has a small, severe face, a perpetual frown, her top lip is a little bit fuller than her bottom lip, her eyes are a swampy brown, and her hair is unremarkable and black. She's beginning to break out too into pimples that her sisters got when they were her age.

Her sisters. Her dead sisters.

She knows the Mormonts are different than the rest of the North. That even among the North it's rare that females get any choice in who they marry, they don't get a choice to learn to use a weapon, they get no choice at all. She knows Sansa Stark doesn't deserve the biting commentary that she gives her.

But when she's called a great beauty just like Lyanna Stark, she can't help it. Lyanna knows she's many things. She's smart, according to the Maester, she's survived this long on Bear Island without anyone starving, her fifty men are loyal to her above all else. She knows there's more than beauty that matters.

But gods does she sometimes look at herself in the mirror, naked, when getting ready for bed. She wills her breasts to grow and she wills her hair to begin to shine. She wills her face to become less pinched and her eyes to have some type of sparkle.

Maybe she's vain for this. She's already a great swordswoman in her own right for her age and size. She's called the Kingmaker after proclaiming Jon Snow as King (though it was a terrible idea, in hindsight, and she shouldn't have let the fact that he can use a sword blind her from the fact that the real warrior was Sansa Stark), she's brave, she's outspoken, she's ruthless to her enemies.

But then why at night does she stare at those stupid fairytale books her sisters got her when she was just learning how to read and feel like throwing them in the fire? Why does she feel like she needs to prove she's better, more, than Lyanna Stark ever was. Even if she hasn't got the beauty, she's got things and they're important, right?

If her mother were here she'd call her her little bear cub and hold her and stroke her face until she fell asleep safe and calm. Her sisters would whisper praises. But she has no one now. No mother, no sisters, her father is a bear. Or worse, her father is a Wildling. Because she sees how that redheaded wildling looks at her sometimes, as if he can't believe what he's seeing, and she's heard his tall tales about fucking a bear. And she's not dumb. She knows her mother didn't fuck an actual bear to have her. But neither of them ever approach the topic and both of them keep their distance as well as they can because the past is just too painful.

Because her mother and her sisters are dead. She's ten years old and the Lady of Bear Island. She is not a great beauty no matter how much her childish girlhood heart wishes it. And she wishes she could stomp on her childish girlhood because it's impractical and dumb because beauty can't do anything for you that a knife couldn't do and more and she knows that rationally it shouldn't matter to her but it does matter because above all else, she's still a young girl.

She hopes one day to blossom into something similar to Arya Stark because Arya Stark was considered ugly once too and now she's a capable woman. She's not dumb enough to think she'll ever look like the Queen in the North. That's fine with her. The Queen in the North, despite the way Lyanna treated her upon their first meeting, despite the slip up of saying she'll be a great beauty, is a strong woman in her own right. 

They have a conversation one day where the Queen admits she wishes she was taught how to fight -- even use a bow and arrow like some noble ladies are allowed to do -- as if maybe that could've saved her father, made her less naive, and maybe she'd have more thoughts in her dumb pretty empty head. Lyanna offers her master-at-arms to her and she is grateful but she's more grateful when Lyanna says she used to wish she had a dumb pretty empty head, too. 

But neither of them have dumb, pretty, empty heads. They have the heads of survivors, of warriors, full of Northern steel and Northern blood, the blood of bears and wolves. 

And so Lyanna doesn't stand in front of the mirror and wish for a different body anymore. One day she'll grow. Maybe she will become pretty, like Arya, or even beautiful like Sansa. Maybe she will be plain but easy to look upon, like Gilly. Maybe she will be ugly, like Brienne. All of them are different. But they've all be forged into Valryian steel swords. Different and deadly, each one, in their own way. Strong as Mothers, Maidens, Crones. Strong as Warriors too, and Smiths. Strong as Strangers. 

Lyanna Mormont is ten years old, nearly eleven, and she is no great beauty unlike her namesake. But every day in the court of the Free and Independent North, she finds herself caring less and less.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know thoughts! Let me know requests! I'm trying to do everyone I've written on the taglist but there are so many characters in the books and shows (you can request from either and I'll make the distinction if needed in the chapter) that I will definitely have forgotten some wonderful female characters.
> 
> Up next is either Barbery Dustin, Olenna Tyrell, Joanna Lannister, Or Genna Lannister. You can tell me which you'd like down in the comments! I'll eventually do all of them, but still!


	4. Barbrey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Barbrey Dustin is a book character so some of you guys who just watch the show might not know her.
> 
> Here's the gist: Brandon Stark and her had a Thing, Brandon Stark left her for his betrothed, Barbrey married Willam Dustin, WIllam Dustin died during the Tower of Joy, Eddard Stark brought back Willam's prized horse but not his bones. Somewhere along this line Barbrey discovers she's infertile. She's anti Team Stark because of Brandon and Eddard's actions. Her sister is Bethany Bolton, who died, and her nephew whom she loves was Domeric Bolton who was killed by Ramsay Snow. Barbrey does not like Ramsay, for obvious reasons.
> 
> So, that's Barbrey Dustin in a nutshell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to do an older character who is a little more obscure. Sorry to the show people who didn't get to see her!

Barbrey Dustin has a list of things she dislikes.

The list goes as following;

1\. Brandon and Eddard Stark

2\. Maesters

3\. Ramsay Snow

4\. Cold turnip soup

5\. People who can't get to the fucking point.

Perhaps items 1-3 are on a different caliber than the last two, though. At least cold turnip soup doesn't make her shake with rage and force her to excuse herself before she loses control.

She should have known about Brandon Stark. He fostered so close to where she grew up and she heard all the stories from barmaids and tavern wenches. And yet the man managed to sweep her off her feet anyway, take her maidenhood, and promise her his hand in marriage. She suspects that promise is the only thing that doesn't make her father kill him.

But then he goes south, most likely fucking every woman along the way, and is betrothed to the Tully girl and poor ruined Barbrey is betrothed to Willam Dustin. Willam is not a bad man and he's kind to her their first night. He doesn't care that she is 'ruined' as her father likes to say and she starts to believe that maybe, just maybe she could have a life with this man. He's nowhere near as handsome and charming as Brandon, but maybe it's better that way.

Barbrey almost feels bad for the little fish betrothed to Brandon Stark because it's very unlikely he'll keep to her bed and she knows how weak the women are in the South. No, maybe marrying Willam is a good thing.

Except for they've only had a year together, maybe half of that, before Brandon and Rickard Stark get themselves killed by the Mad King and Eddard calls the banners. She gifts Willam a fine red steed and he promises to return to her on it.

The steed returns, but not Willam. Eddard made cairns for the dead in Dorne but was fine with bringing back the horse. The horse, for crying out loud. He had no problems bringing back the bones of the idiot girl who ran away with Rhaegar, so why abandon everyone else's bones? 

She can't bear to look at the horse and has it sold for a good amount of silver dragons. 

After that, despite the pressure from her father, her family, she refuses to marry again. She wears her hair in a widow's knot and refuses to wear any other color but black. She will be in perpetual mourning until the bones of her husband have been brought back and she knows deep inside that they never will. She is a Widow through and through.

When she learns it was the Starks' old maester that planted the idea of Brandon marrying South into Rickard's head, Barbrey refuses for there to be a maester at Barrowton. She doesn't need any of those grey mice scampering around with their own agendas. Anything they can do can be done by other people; healers and book-keepers and castellans who have all be shoved out of a job due to the very existence of the maester order.

No maester will every grace Barbrey's hall even if the grey mice in the Citadel keep trying to send her them. She'll refuse, or make their life living hell, every time if needed.

Besides, she knows she's infertile already. She doesn't need an old man with a chain to tell her that. She doesn't need an old man with a chain to push her into a marriage that will only benefit the husband and his family. She'd rather see Barrowton go to some distant relative that she's never heard of than some upstart who married her simply because he knows she's infertile and the castle will go to him and his kin when she dies. 

The only joy in her life is her nephew, who reminds her of her husband with his way with horses, and even he is taken from her. The grey mice say it was a fever and stomach condition that took Domeric from her life but she sees the smirk on Ramsay Snow's face when his father, the dolt, takes him in and legitimizes him. She's not dumb enough to believe that the two incidences are not connected. If Roose has any doubts, he keeps them to himself though, and so she is forced to watch as the monster rapist and his bastard boys terrorize the smallfolk while the lord of the Dreadfort does nothing. 

She refuses to host them in Barrowton when they come for the wedding of "Arya Stark". 

Before meeting the girl, Barbrey is conflicted. On one hand, she hates the Starks for their slight against her. On the other hand, last she heard Arya Stark was a young thing and she knew no person deserved to be given to the Bolton Bastard. When she sees that Arya Stark is actually an imposter made to act as Arya, she feels even worse for it. A Stark is one thing and their suffering she might enjoy but this girl has done nothing and now she's locked in her room from dusk til dawn til dusk again, being raped and flayed and fucked by Ramsay's dogs. She knows about the last one because he boasts about it during dinner and it takes all her self control not to jab her meat knife into the bastard's eyeball.

No one would ever call her a sympathetic woman. No one would ever consider her kind or caring or even motherly. She's strict and severe from her stiff black clothing to her perpetual frown to her biting words to the widow's knot she wears her hair in. But she takes to visiting Jeyne Poole, the fake Arya, and tending to her cuts and bruises as best she can for no maester will ever see to her. Ramsay has made sure of that. The girl is a traumatized mess like the Reek creature her bastard nephew brought with him and she cannot help but feel for her.

She was once a traumatized mess, too. When Brandon Stark took her maidenhead and broke his promise to her. When her father raged that she'd ruin the one thing that made her marriageable. When she found she couldn't have children. When her husband's horse came back but not her husband.

Jeyne's trauma is different, more barbaric, but it's the thought that counts and Barbrey secretly plots against the bastard from inside Winterfell where they're all holed up after the wedding. She does so in secret, obviously, because Roose won't be happy with the death of his only heir, but then again why should she care about Roose? Because he was married to her sister? Bethany did not have a happy marriage. Who could, being married to the pale-eyed corpse of a lord? Now a fat Frey has taken her place and while she doesn't feel as much sympathy, empathy, for someone not of her own blood, she can feel a bit just for the fact the girl is a Frey.

Barbrey is a Lady too, after all, and she knows the plight of Ladies. She's lived the plight of Ladies. She refuses to live it ever again.

Some say that her perpetual state of mourning is due to her deep feelings for her late husband or a way to spite the long-dead Starks that never returned her bones but the truth is that the black clothes, the widow's knot, her iron grip over Barrowton, they all keep her in control. She's the master of her own fate now, not any man whether they be a grey mouse or a husband.

As she plots, she looks forward to teaching Jeyne one day as well when her mental scars heal (if they heal) and the bastard is dead (he will die) the power of widowhood.

In the end she hates the Starks but she can also admit she's grateful to them. Without their painful actions, she would never know what lied within herself.

What lies within herself is winter steel and she intends to use it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Who would you like to see next? If a bunch of people want to see one person, I'll do that person. But I'll get them all done sooner or later. I'm doing more minor characters or non-POV characters first because it's interesting to do non-POV characters and I do want to write something more original for Arya and Sansa, etc. Like, we know what they've been through. So I want to do something special for them.


	5. "Fat" Walda

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Fat" Walda Frey knows the truth of why Roose Bolton married her. She's fat. Not dumb.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More expansion on this character! As someone who deals with anorexia and bulimia, I feel a lot for Walda. No one deserves to be mocked for their body. Ever.

"Fat" Walda Frey remembers her first time looking in the mirror and noticing something was wrong. Or, rather, has it pointed out to her. She is nine years old at that point and her mother sighs and squeezes the fat around her belly and mutters something about hoping it's just fuel for a growth spurt. She restricts what Walda eats after that day, half a portion compared to everyone else. Yet the weight does not go away.

Before that, Walda did not realize a body could be 'wrong'. A body was a body. A physical vessel you lived in until you died and went to the seven heavens or hells. But according to her sisters, her mother, her father, a body could most definitely be wrong. Her sister delights in calling her "Fat" Walda to separate her from all the other Waldas in the Frey family and the moniker catches on like wildfire on clothing. 

She tries her best to dress pretty in pink and sable, find things that make her look flattering, and she speaks in a high girlish voice in order to make sure people know she's just as much of a girl as her sisters and cousins. 

But she can't get rid of the stubborn weight that seems to accumulate everywhere. She tries for a while. Riding and going on walks around the keep, portioning what she eats, going days without eating with her mother's encouragement because her mother only cares about one thing and it's being beautiful and Walda isn't beautiful. Not like her mother and sisters are. And she'll stick with it for a few days before getting discouraged and sneaking down into the kitchens and eating everything in sight. Sometimes she wretches it back up, sometimes she doesn't. The cooks never tell anyone but she can feel their judging eyes on her.

It's easy to disappear in House Frey. There are so many of them. Siblings and half-siblings and cousins and half-cousins, uncles and aunts, bastards all make up House Frey and whenever they visit the Twins from their place in Darry she feels completely lost upon them all and the only thing that makes her stick out is her weight. So she takes to becoming proud of her weight. She's the Fat Frey, yes, but at least people know who she is. Who could say the same of her dozens of relatives? 

She stops dieting and starving herself. She eats what she pleases. She gains some weight but truth be told she may be round but she isn't the whale her family says she is.

And in the end it works out for her because she's married to Roose Bolton, an advantageous match.

Walda isn't dumb. She knows exactly what the deal between Roose Bolton and her grandfather was. Any Frey bride would have their weight paid in silver as a dowry and she was the fattest available Frey to marry. Her cousins and sisters still mock her though, telling her that Roose will never even be able to find her maidenhood through all the fat, that she will be speared by his cock the way one spears a pig and roasts it.

But Roose is fairly gentle on their wedding night and while she feels nothing good, she doesn't hurt too bad either. He claims his rights to her as often as he can and seems to delight in making her squeal or mew in surprise whether it be pain or pleasure and she soon finds she's pregnant. 

They're at Winterfell now, the castle Roose has been raised to. He tells her to never be alone with Ramsay, his bastard, and she takes it to heart because she knows the things she does. The idea of having a son terrifies her because she knows how much danger he'll be in with the Snow bastard around. She will not have her child be mutilated or killed, she won't. She will have her child be loved and cherished no matter what.

And so no one suspects Fat Walda Frey, whose head is said to be filled with mutton, to be plotting with Barbrey Dustin to end Ramsay Snow. No one suspects the airheaded fat girl with the high, warbling voice, the sable cap, the pink frills to have a single thought in her dumb blond little head -- especially anything plotting or murderous.

But she does and she is. She will always be known as the Fat Frey and her appearance will always be mocked by other Ladies because they think she doesn't have the brains to understand their jokes when they're made right in front of her. But Walda's head isn't filled with mutton, despite everyone saying so. She keeps up the act, however, as she grows large with child, and meets and plots secretly when she can with Lady Dustin.

The Frey's house sigil may be twin towers but her husband's sigil is a flayed man. It's pink and red, her favorite colors, and if the others cannot see that beneath the layers of fat she too holds a flaying knife inside of her, then that is their own fault.

It truly is their fault for forgetting that her brain is not, in fact, located in her stomach.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thoughts? Opinions? Suggestions?


	6. Sansa

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Queen in the North may not be all ice after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey! Sorry for my long disappearance! Hope this makes it up to you with a more happy chapter this time around! We have Sansa. 
> 
> Some characters I do have plans for multiple chapters for, just so you know, if they have more I want to explore or a bit of a plotline. Cersei and Sansa are two of them. 
> 
> Once again, if there's a female character you'd like me to do let me know in the comments!

They say the Queen in the North has a heart of ice and Sansa thinks to herself some nights that it might be true. She guides her subjects and dispenses justice with a firm but fair hand, just like her father had taught Robb all those years ago. It's sad. She can barely remember what Ned Stark's face looked like after this time and the statue of him in the Crypt is subpar. She's still working on finding someone with a better memory to make a better one. Ned was considered cold too to those who weren't his family.

But there in lies the rub, didn't it? Sansa's family was gone. Scattered. Jon banished to the Night's Watch, though she knew for certain he was actually north of the wall living with the Free Folk (she did not have a problem with this as she'd noticed it was among them he seemed happiest), Bran, when he truly _is_ Bran, is too busy ruling the Six Kingdoms and too busy being the Three-Eyed-Raven when not, and Arya has gone on her grand journey to find what's west of Westeros.

She's happy that these scatterings are of their own choice (for the most part) and not like the scattering that happened when the War of the Five Kings went on but still, she has no family in her halls. Even Brienne and Pod are with Bran in the South. There's an emptiness to Winterfell like she's never really felt before, not even when the Bolton's destroyed and ruled it, and it _does_ tug on her heart no matter what the other lords say.

And the other lords say a lot. They always have. She's lucky that they tend to side on the same issues, that they respect her from the time she was the de facto Queen in the North, Lady of the North, when Jon was with his Dragon Queen and soldiers were with their dragonglass and she saw to make sure everyone got food and clothing. They know she is capable but they still are, in most cases, men. 

And, as a whore once told her, men only want one thing from a pretty girl. 

But she cannot find it in her heart to remarry. She's been married twice now, both awful, one incredibly so, and she has the scars and marks to prove it all. If she is to remarry, she will do it on her own time and to someone she trusts and loves. She'll have to produce heirs one way or another but Sansa also knows that she can make her own bastards legitimate and she doesn't necessarily need to marry to have children. But no northern lord would be happy to be pushed aside and have his child claimed to be fathered by a wolf and it's not necessarily her they want anyway, but the power she has. Though anyone marrying her would be taking her name and only having the power of a Consort, the men still surrounded her like dogs on the hunt. 

So if she is to have a child fathered by a wolf, it will be not by them. 

But Sansa is young and she has her entire life ahead of her for that. She's only twenty-one, after all.

But still the emptiness when she lies down for the night, the terrors that come when she closes her eyes, she wishes they would change. Disappear. But that's not how that works, is it? There was a time when she felt safe, when a specific person made her feel safe, but he'd trod all over that trust and vulnerability and now was north of the Wall roving with a band of Wildlings and she had never truly had his heart anyway. A more romantic (and less informed) person would say that it still belonged to the Dragon Queen but Sansa remembers whispering late at night with Jon about the things they went through back when they were campaigning for men to take back Winterfell and Sansa knows that the love that truly never left Jon's heart is the Wildling woman who died in his arms.

The Wildlings -- Free Folk -- she mentally corrects herself, have proven a curious sort. Many have gone back to their homelands beyond the Wall now that the threat of the Night King is gone. But some have decided to stay and she's rewarded a particular few with castles now abandoned due to house lines that died out. There's a particular system in place for the Free Folk. 

They do not have to bend the knee, nor are they required to come when the banners are called, but they are required to pay the same taxes everyone else does if they are gaining something from the land. They must appoint their own chieftains and those chieftains must meet with Sansa on occasion to show that everything is running smoothly. They are not citizens in the same way the Northern Lords are, but they are people of the North and she knows if the North is threatened, required or not, they will defend it.

Some _have_ bent the knee however and have intermingled with other dying, smaller noble houses to create more noble houses that fill the empty homes of Karhold and Last Hearth, along with many others. Briar, Woodvein, and Sapp are the three major with minor houses like Greenwood, Foote, and humorously, Giantsbane (it's run, as far as Sansa is aware, by one of Tormund's daughters who had decided to stay in the North. She couldn't not give one of their best allies a house, though it definitely has the weird streak she thinks runs in that family).

She makes it a habit to visit the other houses as often as she can to build up relationships again with the more outlying noble families and even if she comes off as cold or distant, she knows her people love her in a way they didn't love Daenerys or Jon.

It's when she's visiting house Briar however that it happens. She's taking a survey of the courtyard and the work done making the castle of Last Hearth a home again after the White Walkers had destroyed it and killed poor Ned Umber. One of the things that still tugs on her heartstrings are the deaths of Ned Umber and Alys Karstark. She was harsh on them for reasons they couldn't control but they were loyal to the North to the end. She appreciates it more than most people know.

She's taking her time in the courtyard when suddenly there's a flash of red fur and she's on her ass in the snow, a wolf-y face looking into hers with its tongue lolling to the side. Behind the wolfdog come a bunch of pups, slightly different in stature, but obviously full of wild blood and they range from sandy brown to black and yip at her excitedly, nipping at her ankles and absolutely swarming her. 

"Oh no," she hears a male's voice say, "Blue! Get back here!" A man is running up to them looking absolutely horrified. He pulls the large wolfdog away and the pups follow. "I'm so sorry, Your Grace," he apologizes. "I swear she's usually much better behaved, it's just these pups bring out the wildness in her."

Sansa is, for a moment, stunned. The man in front of her must be a few years her senior and wears the sigil of house Briar -- thorny vines wrapped around a weirwood tree -- but he's not from the noble part of it, as she would have at least recognized them. The man is tall and slender with delicate facial features and curly red hair that hangs to his chin, the color of blood, his eyes are green and sparkling and Sansa for one moment is terrified because if there's one thing she doesn't trust it's good looking men.

The man takes her silence for anger and continues on rambling, "I'll make sure to keep them under lock and key for your visit now," he says but she rises, brushed herself off, and he quiets once more.

"Blue's an odd name for a red wolfdog," she says and holds out her hand for the animal to sniff. It does so and then delicately licks her hand and presses its head forward into its grip so she can scratch it behind the ears.

"It's cos' her eyes are blue," the man says. "Again, my deepest apologies --"

She cuts him off. "It's alright. You don't need to lock them up. They're beautiful." The pups are still crowding around her ankles all trying to get a bit of attention and the man finally relaxes. "When I was young, I had a direwolf. Every child in the family did. But she was killed early on in life." Speaking of Lady still pains her to this very moment but there's something almost magical about how she feels with all the pups at her feet.

"Blue's a wolfdog but she's got a small bit of direwolf in her -- the pups are a little more than half direwolf, the father was a purebred. Before you could barely catch sight of a direwolf but now that the white walkers are gone they're coming out from wherever they've been hiding." he smiled down at the litter. "and I've always worked with dogs -- they always seem to find me -- and I found this particular litter and the mother when I came to serve House Briar."

Sansa bends down again, enthralled with the small pups at her feet. A particular one, with patched red and white fur, catches her eye and the moment it does the little she-wolf runs over to her, nudging her palm with her cold nose. There's a warmth inside of Sansa that she hasn't felt in a while now, with this pups fur through her hands, and it's almost overbearing how it makes her heart ache. But it's a good ache, like growing pains, something inside her is expanding, allowing room for more.

"What did you say your name was?" she asked.

"Oh, I didn't," he rubs the back of his neck. "Askeladden, but that's a mouthful so most just say Askel."

"I'm Sansa," she says.

"Oh, I know who you are," Askel says, grinning. "As if you needed to introduce yourself." He looks down at the pups. "The little she-wolf seems quite taken with you," he notes. "If you've raised a direwolf before, you could probably raise her just fine if you wanted to. She's past her milk age."

"How much?" Sansa asks but Askel shakes his head. 

"You can just take her. I don't want any money from them."

She locks eyes with the red and white direwolf mix and realizes that like her mother the little wolf's eyes are a stunning blue. The choice has practically already been made, now. 

When she leaves Last Hearth it's with a pup in her arms and a new kennelmaster by her side. It doesn't take long for the pup to display her most noticeable trait -- more noticeable even than her odd coloring and odd eyes -- the little thing howls to the night sky as if serenading the very North itself.

So of course, Sansa can name her nothing else but Singer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comment and kudos if you like it, please!


	7. Daenerys

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daenerys's will be known in the history books for both great and terrible things. But this, no one will ever know.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So here we go with another character. I was debating between Dany and Margaery nut I decided to to Dany first. I am not a giant Dany fan. I actually don't really like her but this is all about the human side of all the female characters and headcanons of what they must think in certain parts of their life and what they've been through. So, there will be no bashing of any character no matter my feelings for them, personally. Hope this makes Dany fans proud.

In the history books they'll write all the accomplishments and horrors of Daenerys Targaryen. They will call her a mad queen, a murderess, a butcher. They'll mention her goal to free the world of slavery only mildly, say that it started it Astapor.

But it really didn't. It started long before them.

She's terrified of Khal Drogo and his heavy hands and the uncaring demeanor in the bedroom, treating her like a hard ridden horse, has her bruised and bloodied more often than not. When she learns to take control of the bedroom antics and he falls for her, she also falls for him. But a tiny voice shouts inside her and calls him her rapist. She can't be in love with him but she is.

Besides if every high born women claimed rape during consummation she figured that many many lords would have their balls chopped off. Consummation needs to happen to make a marriage true and it can be horrible for some. It's only later when she actually feels pleasure in her sexual activities with Drogo.

And now she's pregnant and content to live that life without many thoughts of the iron throne. That was her brother's goal, not hers, not entirely. But then the wine merchant tries to kill her and Drogo promises to take her back and earn her crown. She lets the other parts of his speak, pillaging and raping and killing, pass over her mind and she pays no attention to the unsteady feeling in her chest.

But that changes with the Lhazareen people. For she can't stomach watching the Dothraki pillage and burn the town, kill the men, and rape all the females from the eldest to the youngest until blood gushes from each severe damage they take. She wants to tell Drogo to make them stop but when she finds him he's balls deep in some pretty, young girl who cries out in pain as blood runs down her legs. 

When she sees that she stumbled out of the way and begins vomiting. These women and girls look at her as they would a monster and why shouldn't they? Her husband is raping innocents and she does nothing to stop it because it's the Dothraki way and this is only the first village they've raided after he made his promise.

How many lives is she willing to destroy to get the Iron Throne? How many innocent girls will be tortured, raped, kept as slaves, so she gets what she wants? Where is the line? She can talk to Drogo but all of it will be dismissed as the wailing of women in their male-centered world and for once she feels powerless in a way she hadn't felt since she lived with her brother, since her disastrous wedding night and the nights that followed.

The vomit is bitter tasting in her mouth and she uses a water skin to wash it out. Her husband calls to her. Their work at the now ruined village full of dead men and dying women who've begun to bleed out from their harsh treatment and a few women and girls tied up and kept as slaves is all over. Tomorrow they'll find another village and do the same thing.

And at the end of the day Drogo will want to lie with her with other women's blood on his cock and she doesn't know what to do only that it disgusts her that she lies with, loves, someone who commit so much damage and she's torn with how she should feel and how she does feel and she remembers she carries his child and there is no way out and that she must contend to this life before she gets her goal of the Iron Throne.

If that means vomiting or losing sleep as she stares at her husband, her sun and stars, and trying to compartmentalize what he's done and did, she'll have to do it. Even if it feels wrong and a voice inside her is screaming at her about who had the right and why and she feels so dirty that no amount of baths can wash her clean.

They say that her reign to free the slaves started when she saw the Unsullied in Astapor, bought them, freed them, and they still became her army. Her liberation of Yunkai. 

But no, her reign to free the slaves begins that night, sleeping in that burned out and bloody village. She swears to do something next time if only to ease her guilt when it her husband and his Khalasar go to the next village.

In the end, her intervention causes her death and she mourns like any wife would, goes to extremes to get him back, and when her baby is lost and she has to smother her husband's shell of a body she decides that this can never happen again. She will never deal in slavery. And she will always love her late husband but she will never get rid of the burr in her heart that tells her that she let this happen and that her husband is a murderer, a rapist, and she looked aside. And that tears her apart and every day she tries to make up for it in fire and blood.

The history books may say what they like about her. But she knows the truth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I thought this would fit beautifully with Dany because she's someone who at one time in life was very compassionate before she was all consumed by her conquerer and ditactor-like tendencies. And for someone who was very against slavery I wanted to explore how she felt regarding her husband's actions against other women and the Khalasar's actions. I wanted her thoughts regarding that and the fact she still loves Drogo to collide.


	8. Sansa II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If being sired by bears is good enough for the Mormonts, being sired by wolves is enough for the Queen in the North.

It feels like forever since that time she visited one of the new Wildling Houses and came back not just with a direwolf but with an entire pack of mix-breeds, all bloods of dogs and direwolves and the normal kind of wolf, along with the red haired trainer that came with them. 

In reality it's only been three years.

Sansa wonders if that's because for one she's finally happy in a way she's never been before. Because the Ice Queen's heart has finally melted a little. She loves the thundering pawsteps of the new mixed pack running around the grounds of Winterfell and she sings along with her own wolf, Singer, because that was what she was. But she's also for the first time enjoyed the feeling of someone touching her body, knowing they won't care about the scars, knowing that they are dedicated to her and her comfort. The Wildling Man from house Briar is exactly who the gods fashioned for her. Brave and gentle and strong and understanding with just a hint of impishness to get the usually stony-faced Queen laughing.

She wonders if the other Lords know. As the proposal letters stop despite there being no Lord Stark, Consort of the Queen in the North. But she's sure if they know, they don't complain, and even if they might know who she still tells them that her children are fathered by a wolf.

Askeladden, who has spent so much of his life around wolves to the point where he's nearly a pack member himself, loves this.

And he loves the children she's cradling in her arms right now.

Sansa promised herself long ago that she would not name her children after the dead. She would not burden them with the weights that names of the past carried and the pain that they held. There would be no Robbs or Eddards or Lyannas or Catelyns. These children would be their own.

And she keeps that rule -- with one tiny exception -- to this moment as she names the twin girls she's cradling now. Next to their father, are two younger boys who both have deep red hair the color of wine and stark grey eyes, their names being Hvitserk and Ersa, two names from Wildling legend. They peer over the side of the bed, near their father, to see the new siblings who have just arrived in the world. Twins, like them, but girls. 

The first one is easy to name, Sansa thinks. Ebba, for the name means strong in some forms of the old tongue of Winter. But it's the second twin she struggles with, seeing a cascade of curly black hair already on her head and the sea-green eyes she possesses unlike her sister, who looks just like a younger version of Sansa herself, with her father's nose and ears.

But this girl has black hair, and while that is common for a Stark, usually it's straight. And her eyes, well, Askeladden's eyes are green though much darker than sea-green.

And so Sansa thinks about this over and over, staring at her nameless daughter's face and drinking in the features that are not just Stark or Wildling, but remind her too of one other House...one particular person from that House.

Sansa Stark prays for forgiveness, for breaking her vow, even with the changes to the name, to suit a girl and not a boy. But it can't be helped.

All her children get monikers as they grow.

Hvitserk 'Cold River' Stark, for the time the young boy jumped into the freezing river to prove he was just as brave as any man.

Ersa, 'The Silent' Stark, for his ability to walk undetected throughout the castle and woods around and for his gentle, deep voice that made maidens weep when he sang.

Ebba 'The Firebird' Stark, for her flaming red hair and her knack for hawking.

And last but not least:

Thea 'The Seawolf' Stark, for her lovely sea-green eyes and in memory of the man who saved Sansa's life.

It's a vow broken, but still, she knows she chose correctly when Thea takes her first step into her namesake's ocean origin.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed this first POV. Please let me know if there's a female character you'd like to see be written about. Note that many characters will have multiple chapters depending on the time period. I chose Cersei in her girlhood first, before her failed betrothal to Rhaegar and marriage to Robert, which will be a different chapter.


End file.
